Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul by Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen & Janet Matthews & Raymond Aaron

Author:Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen & Janet Matthews & Raymond Aaron [Canfield, Jack & Hansen, Mark Victor & Matthews, Janet & Aaron, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780757399947
Publisher: Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Reprinted by permission of Québec City Convention Centre. ©2001.

6

ON FAMILY

I like family life. I like it when I get home at night and the kids shout, “Dad!” and trip over my feet and hug me and smell sweaty because they’ve been playing all day. That’s love, brother.

Gary Lautens

The Legacy of Mary

One sword can rarely overcome a score, though one heart may be braver than a hundred.

Samuel James Watson

It was November 1984. I had picked up a copy of Equinox magazine from a table in my daughter’s home and gasped—there before me, in an article entitled “Ghost Towns of Alberta,” was a picture of a man named Lawrence Stewart. Lying in front of him was a pile of books that he called his “Memories of Etzikom.” It had been forty-seven years since I had been taken from my home in Etzikom, Alberta, at the age of five.

I sat there in a state of shock as a little voice in my head said, This is it, Maree.

In 1938 I’d been sent to live in the Kiwanis Home for Children after my mother suffered a nervous breakdown. My father was ill equipped to raise seven children alone, during the Depression, and still look after his farm.

It wasn’t long before I was adopted by a fine family who was well-off enough to give me everything I could have asked for. My other brothers and sisters were either adopted or put into foster homes. I never saw or heard from any of them again. Over the years, when anyone would ask me if I wanted to find my family, I would say, “I will when I can never be hurt again.”

I grew up and worked out a successful career for myself in early childhood education; married my husband, Leo, who loved me very much and encouraged me in everything I did; and became the mother of five wonderful children who thought a great deal of me.

If ever there was a time to find my birth family, it was now—almost fifty years later!

As I sat there in shock, staring at Lawrence Stewart’s article, Leo and I began talking about my memories of my own family. I remembered the names of my brothers and sisters. There was John, Coulter, Mable, Nancy, me (Mary), May and a little brother who had been born just before we were taken away from our father.

“It wouldn’t hurt to write to this Lawrence Stewart and ask what he knows,” suggested Leo. I took the magazine home, and the next day, that’s what I did.

Three weeks later, I received a letter from Mr. Stewart, telling me he’d been in the area for about sixteen years and knew many of the families’ histories. He thought he’d be able to help me. He remembered only one family that had been broken up back then, and their name was Robinson. The father’s name was Dave, and he recalled there was a son named Coulter.

I wrote back to him enclosing a copy of the birth certificate that had been issued to me when I was adopted.